Education and EdTech Executive Hiring

Education and EdTech are usually spoken of together and behave almost nothing alike. One is a regulated, publicly accountable sector where the board is a trustee body and the accounting officer has personal responsibilities to a government department. The other is commercial software sold into it, with a long sales cycle and a customer who cannot easily switch.

This guide covers both, and specifically the point where they meet — because the commonest hiring error in this space is moving an executive between them on the assumption that sector knowledge transfers. It looks at the senior roles that matter most: the chief executive and chief financial officer of a multi-academy trust, the head and bursar of an independent school or school group, the principal and finance director of a college, the vice-chancellor’s executive team in a university, and the CEO, CTO, product and commercial leaders of the businesses that sell to all of them. It also covers private equity ownership of school groups and education businesses, which has brought commercial governance into parts of the sector that did not previously have it.

Education: who the board actually is

In a multi-academy trust, the board is a body of trustees who are also company directors and charity trustees. Academy trusts are exempt charities, so the Department for Education rather than the Charity Commission acts as their principal regulator. The trustees are usually volunteers. They carry legal duties, they are accountable for the use of public money, and they are rarely paid — which changes the dynamic of every senior appointment beneath them.

The accounting officer. Under the Academy Trust Handbook 2026, which took effect on 1 October 2026, the board must appoint in writing a senior executive leader and a named accounting officer, and the accounting officer should normally be that senior executive leader. The accounting officer is personally responsible for regularity, propriety and value for money in the use of the trust’s funds, and signs an annual statement on regularity, propriety and compliance. That duty is owed to the Department for Education and it is not delegable in substance. Candidates from commercial backgrounds are frequently unaware of what they are taking on, and for a trust looking at CEO recruitment from outside the sector, it is the single most important thing to explain early.

The chief financial officer role is prescribed. The handbook requires the board to appoint a chief financial officer, and the CFO and their finance staff must be appropriately qualified and/or experienced. For larger trusts — over 3,000 pupils — the CFO should hold a professional accountancy qualification from a body such as the ICAEW, ACCA, CIMA or CIPFA, and recruitment exercises for those trusts starting on or after 1 October 2026 should specify it. The handbook also says the accounting officer and CFO roles should not be held by the same person. Anyone running CFO recruitment for a growing trust should check the pupil number before writing the person specification.

Senior pay needs approval before advertising. From 1 October 2026, the handbook requires trusts to obtain Department for Education approval before advertising a new appointment where remuneration exceeds £174,000 (or the pro rata equivalent) or performance-related pay exceeds £25,000. Trusts must also publish the number of employees whose benefits exceed £100,000, in £10,000 bands. For large trusts recruiting a chief executive, the approval step now sits at the front of the timetable, not the back.

Charity duties apply elsewhere too. Many independent schools are registered charities, and their governors carry duties under charity law alongside company law, with the Charity Commission as regulator. Executives advising those boards need to understand which hat is being worn. Much of what we set out in our guide to hiring senior executives for charities and not-for-profits applies directly to independent school governance.

The practical consequence for hiring: authority in education is more constrained than an organisation chart suggests, pay is publicly disclosed and scrutinised, and decisions that would be routine commercially may require trustee or departmental approval and a documented rationale.

Independent schools, colleges and universities

The trust model is only one part of the sector. The other institutional settings each change the senior brief in their own way.

Independent schools and school groups. Since 1 January 2025, education services supplied by private schools in the UK have been subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20%. For many schools that has turned the bursar’s role from steady stewardship into active financial management: fee modelling, pupil-number sensitivity, VAT recovery on costs, cash flow and, in some cases, merger or closure planning. A bursar or finance director appointed today needs commercial and scenario-planning skills that were less central five years ago. The head’s role has shifted too — more time with parents on value, more time with governors on viability, and closer working with the bursar than many heads are used to.

Further education colleges. Colleges in England were reclassified to the public sector in 2022, which brought them under closer Department for Education financial control. The principal is typically the accounting officer, and college finance directors now work within a public-sector framework on borrowing, spending and severance. Candidates who built their careers before the change may need to be tested on how they have adapted.

Higher education. Universities registered with the Office for Students must have an accountable officer — normally the head of the provider — who reports to the OfS on the provider’s behalf. The vice-chancellor, chief financial officer, chief operating officer and registrar sit inside a governance structure that includes the governing body, the academic senate and the regulator, and financial sustainability is now a standing regulatory concern. University executive hires are slow, consultative and heavily panel-driven, and candidates from outside the sector need to be ready for that.

Safeguarding is not a compliance item

This deserves separate treatment because it is the area where commercially trained executives most often misjudge the sector.

Safer recruitment requirements apply to appointments in education settings — enhanced DBS checks, prohibition checks where relevant, verified employment history and gaps, and references taken directly from previous employers rather than accepted from the candidate. The statutory framework is set out in Keeping children safe in education, the Department for Education’s guidance for schools and colleges on safeguarding and safer recruitment, which is revised each year — the 2026 edition came into force on 1 September 2026. It applies to senior appointments as much as to teaching staff, and to trustees and governors as well as executives.

Two implications for a search process. The reference and vetting stage is longer and more prescribed than in commercial hiring, and it should be built into the timetable rather than treated as an afterthought. And a candidate’s response to safeguarding questions at interview is a genuine assessment signal — someone treating it as bureaucracy has misread the sector.

There is a third, less obvious point. Senior leaders set the safeguarding culture of the organisation. A chief executive or chief operating officer who sees safeguarding as the designated safeguarding lead’s problem, rather than a board-level risk, will under-resource it. The interview should test whether the candidate understands that accountability sits with them.

EdTech: a different business entirely

EdTech companies sell software and services into schools, trusts, colleges and universities. The commercial dynamics are distinctive in four ways.

The buyer is not the user. A business manager or trust CFO signs; teachers and students use. Product decisions that delight users may not move procurement at all, and executives from consumer software frequently misjudge this.

Budgets are annual, constrained and politically determined. Sales cycles align to academic and funding years, and demand is not smoothly distributed. A commercial leader who has never sold into a publicly funded buyer will underestimate how much timing matters.

Switching costs are high and churn is low. Once a management information system or safeguarding platform is embedded, replacing it is disruptive. That produces durable revenue and slow growth — attractive to investors, frustrating to executives from high-velocity SaaS. Our tech and SaaS executive hiring guide covers the general software playbook; the point here is how much of it has to be adapted.

Data protection is a first-order concern. Products handling children’s data face heightened expectations, including the Age Appropriate Design Code. The Information Commissioner’s Office is a meaningful regulator for this sector, and a technology leader who treats it lightly is a risk to the business. That is why CTO recruitment for an EdTech business should test data governance as hard as architecture and delivery.

Product leadership has its own twist. A chief product officer in EdTech has to balance teacher workload, pupil outcomes, procurement criteria and the curriculum, and the evidence a school will accept that a product works is different from conversion data in a consumer app. The best candidates can talk about both.

Private equity and investor ownership

Investor ownership is now a significant feature of the sector, both in EdTech and in groups of independent schools, nurseries and specialist provision. It changes the senior brief in predictable ways.

• Reporting cadence. Monthly board packs, lender covenants and a value-creation plan replace the termly governor cycle. A bursar who has never reported to an investor board may struggle with the pace.
• Two audiences. Leaders of an investor-owned school group answer to shareholders and to parents, inspectors and regulators. The ones who do well can explain a commercial decision in educational terms and the reverse.
• Buy-and-build. Many school groups and EdTech platforms grow by acquisition, which puts a premium on CFOs and COOs who have integrated businesses, systems and people.
• Exit horizon. Incoming executives should understand the expected hold period and their equity position before accepting; it shapes every decision they will make.

For the institution side, the cultural gap between investor expectations and educational practice is often the real hiring risk. A candidate who has worked in both, or in another regulated, service-based sector under investor ownership, usually settles faster than one who has only worked in one.

Where the candidates come from

For education institutions. Sector-experienced executives — trust COOs, college finance directors, university registrars, experienced bursars — are the lowest-risk pool and understand the governance. Commercial candidates bring discipline the sector often lacks, particularly in estates, procurement and financial planning, but need the accountability framework explained honestly. Charity and public-sector backgrounds transfer more readily than corporate ones because the governance instincts are closer.

For EdTech companies. Three pools. Software executives without sector experience, who move fast and misread the buyer. Educators who moved into product, who understand the customer deeply and may lack commercial rigour. And executives from adjacent public-sector software — health, local government — who understand procurement and funding cycles, and who are consistently the most underrated of the three.

Movement between the two is harder than it looks. A trust COO joining an EdTech company brings invaluable customer insight and often struggles with commercial pace. A software executive joining a trust brings rigour and may be unprepared for trustee governance and public accountability. Both moves work when made deliberately and supported; neither works when assumed to be lateral.

Our education and EdTech executive recruitment team searches all of these pools on each mandate, rather than defaulting to the obvious sector candidates, and is explicit with clients about the risk each route carries.

Assessment: what to test

For education appointments

“Describe a decision where the financially efficient option was not the right one for students.” — tests whether the candidate understands that the objective is not profit. Answers that resolve the tension too neatly are worth probing.

“How have you worked with a volunteer board?” — trustees give limited time and carry real liability. Candidates who describe managing a board rather than serving one have misunderstood the relationship.

“Talk me through a safeguarding concern you have handled.” — for any role in an education setting. What matters is the escalation instinct and the absence of hesitation.

“What would you do if a spending decision the chief executive wanted did not meet the test of propriety?” — for finance appointments in a trust or college. The CFO needs the confidence to say no, and the handbook’s separation of the accounting officer and CFO roles exists for exactly this reason.

For EdTech appointments

“Who signs the contract in your target customer, and who has to want the product?” — the split between buyer and user is the sector’s defining commercial feature.

“How did you handle a customer whose budget disappeared mid-cycle?” — public funding is not smooth, and candidates who have never faced this will forecast badly.

“What did you change about your product because of children’s data requirements?” — a specific answer indicates genuine sector experience; a general commitment to privacy does not.

Timeline, pay and structure

Education. Allow longer than a comparable commercial search — four to six months is common for a chief executive or CFO. Trustee governance means longer approval, academic-year timing constrains start dates, notice periods can run to a full term, departmental approval may be needed before a senior post is advertised, and safer recruitment vetting adds time at the end. Pay is published, benchmarked against comparable institutions, and set by a committee that must be able to justify it publicly.

EdTech. Closer to conventional technology hiring. Equity is normal and frequently a large part of the package, particularly in venture or private equity-backed businesses, and the founder’s view of the role often matters as much as the board’s.

Interim and fractional options. Where an education institution faces an unexpected departure mid-year, an interim appointment is often the only workable answer, since a permanent search will not conclude within the academic year. Smaller trusts, schools and early-stage EdTech companies may not need a full-time finance or technology leader at all, and a fractional C-suite appointment can give them senior judgement at a cost the budget can carry.

As a Chartered Accountant, Adrian Lawrence’s view on pay is direct: boards sometimes set senior pay low to avoid attention and then wonder why the shortlist is thin. It is better to pay what the role requires and be able to justify it on scale and complexity than to under-pay and appoint someone who cannot do the job.

Four mistakes to avoid

Treating education and EdTech as one sector. They share a customer base and little else. Moves between them should be deliberate and supported.

Not explaining the accounting officer duty. It is a personal responsibility and it belongs in the conversation before the offer, not after the first audit.

Under-paying to avoid scrutiny. Published pay makes boards cautious. A thin shortlist costs more than a well-justified salary.

Leaving vetting to the end. Safer recruitment requirements are prescribed and take time. Build them into the plan rather than discovering them at offer stage.

If you are planning a senior appointment in either part of the sector, our education and EdTech search practice can help you scope the brief, the timetable and the approvals before the role goes to market.

Frequently asked questions

Can a commercial executive move into education leadership?

Yes, and many do well — particularly in finance, estates and operations, where the sector often lacks commercial discipline. The adjustment is to trustee governance, public accountability and published pay. Charity and public-sector backgrounds transfer more readily than corporate ones.

What is the accounting officer duty?

Academy trusts must appoint an accounting officer, normally the senior executive leader, with personal responsibility for regularity, propriety and value for money in the use of public funds, answerable to the Department for Education. It should be explained to candidates before an offer is made.

Does a multi-academy trust CFO need to be a qualified accountant?

All trust CFOs must be appropriately qualified and/or experienced. Under the Academy Trust Handbook 2026, CFOs of trusts with more than 3,000 pupils should hold a professional accountancy qualification, such as ICAEW, ACCA, CIMA or CIPFA.

How long does an education appointment take?

Longer than a comparable commercial search. Trustee approval, academic-year start dates, notice periods that can run to a full term, any departmental pay approval and safer recruitment vetting all extend the timetable.

Does EdTech experience matter when hiring for an EdTech company?

It helps considerably on the commercial side, because the buyer-versus-user split and funding-cycle timing are distinctive. Executives from adjacent public-sector software — health or local government — often transfer better than those from consumer or general B2B SaaS.